Rengo - Company History

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Financial history 1956–2026 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded 1909
Founder Inoue Teijiro (井上貞治郎)
Founding location 東京都
Core business at founding Manufacture and sale of corrugated board
Listed 1949
President Kawamoto Yosuke President since 2020 (age 71, as of 2026)
Current priority M&A · Earnings recovery Taking in functional film and turning the overseas business around
Founding
Rengo keeps as its founding anniversary 12 April 1909, the day Inoue Teijiro resolved to set up in business on his own. In August of that year he started a sole-proprietor paper-container business in Tokyo under the name Sanseisha, having worked out for himself, at Nakaokachimachi, a technique for crimping corrugations into paperboard; he named the cushioning material danboru and made it in Japan. He gave a transport material that had no name both a name and a manufacture at once. In May 1920, with the good offices of Tokyo Electric, he consolidated five companies including Higashi Shiki Seisakusho, Eiritsusha and Teikoku Shiki Seizo, and established Rengo Shiki Co., Ltd. with capital of ¥2 million. The company listed on the Osaka Securities Exchange in 1949 and changed its trade name to Rengo Co., Ltd. in 1972.
The Decision
It enclosed within itself both the raw material for, and the recovery of, the material it had named. Corrugated board admits of no difference in quality, and a company that holds only the converting stage takes swings in raw-material prices straight into its profit and loss. Inoue Teijiro, who in 1920 consolidated five proliferating rivals into Rengo Shiki, absorbed the competitor Nihon Seishi in 1923 to take in the Chibune mill and its containerboard machinery, added the converting plant of the Yodogawa works in 1930 and the paper mill at the same works in 1936, and so began integrated production from containerboard through to finished product. From 1962 it accelerated the building of regional plants in order to cover the whole country for waste-paper collection. In 1999 it merged with Settsu, and in 2000 Otsubo Kiyoshi, from Sumitomo Corporation, became president and went on taking in domestic rivals such as Marusan Seishi. Putting everything from procurement to recovery inside the company created the condition for making economies of scale tell in a product where price admits of no difference.
Today
In the year sales reached ¥1 trillion, the overseas business alone made a loss. Consolidated revenue for the year to March 2026 was $6.4B (¥1.01tn) and operating profit $234.6M (¥37bn). Paperboard and paper processing brought in $3.3B (¥522bn) with segment profit of $161.9M (¥26bn), flexible packaging $1.2B (¥192bn) with $58.8M (¥9bn), and heavy-duty packaging $293.4M (¥46bn) with $11.4M (¥2bn), while the overseas-related segment sold $1.3B (¥209bn) yet booked an impairment loss of $119.5M (¥19bn) and sank to a loss of $10.1M (¥2bn). The business that began with the 1990 stake in a Malaysian joint venture and was widened, heavy packaging and all, by the $224.2M (¥24bn) acquisition of Tri-Wall in October 2016 accounts for a fifth of revenue and earns nothing. The integrated production of containerboard and converting assembled at home could not be moved abroad in the same shape, tied as it is there to freight costs and local waste-paper prices.
Competition
With the rivals that make containerboard it got no further than an alliance; the ones it absorbed were all on the box-making side. In November 2006 Rengo entered a three-way strategic alliance with Nippon Paper and Sumitomo Corporation, a tie-up made under the pressure for industry consolidation set off by Oji Paper's hostile tender offer for Hokuetsu Paper in July of that year. Talk of full integration ran alongside it, but the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 left both companies busy with their own results, and in 2009 the alliance itself was dissolved. Rengo went back to standing alone and took in converting-side rivals one after another — Fukui Kagaku Kogyo in 1991, Settsu in 1999, Marusan Seishi in 2000. While Oji and Nippon Paper faced falling domestic demand for paper as a whole, Rengo added lines outside corrugated board — heavy-duty packaging with Tri-Wall in 2016 and functional film with RM Tohcello in 2024. The focus of competition moved from scale in containerboard to how full a range of packaging lines a company can put together.

Timeline

1910–1962Corrugated board made in Japan, and a vertically integrated model completed

  1. 1909Inoue Teijiro resolves to go into business on his own, in April
  2. 1909Sanseisha founded; first corrugated board manufactured in Japan
  3. 1920Rengo Shiki established by merging five companies, with ¥2m capital
  4. 1923Absorbs the competitor Nihon Seishi (Nishiyodogawa, Osaka)
  5. 1930Yodogawa converting plant opened in Osaka
  6. 1936Yodogawa paper mill added; capital tie-up with Tokyo Electric
  7. 1937Tokyo plant built
  8. 1948Nagoya plant and sales office opened; rebuilding begins
  9. 1949Shares listed on the Osaka Securities Exchange
  10. 1961Tonegawa paper mill built
  11. 1962Construction of regional plants accelerated for waste-paper collection

1963–2000Modernisation after the founder's death, and expansion through the Settsu merger

  1. 1963Founder Inoue Teijiro dies; labour disputes intensify
  2. 1968Three-Year Plan drawn up; manual-worker grades abolished for monthly pay
  3. 1972Trade name changed from Rengo Shiki to Rengo Co., Ltd.
  4. 1975Eight-point recession programme announced; half-year loss
  5. 1975Shin-Kyoto plant built
  6. 1985Chiba plant built
  7. 1990Equity stake in a Malaysian joint venture; flexible-packaging department set up
  8. 1991Merger with Fukui Kagaku Kogyo (Kanazu and Takefu plants)
  9. 1993Sanda plant built, relocating the Osaka plant
  10. 1994Niigata Danboru and Asahikawa Rengo merged in
  11. 1998Howa Sangyo made a subsidiary; entry into flexible packaging
  12. 1999Merger with Settsu
  13. 2000Otsubo Kiyoshi, former vice-president of Sumitomo Corporation, becomes president
  14. 2000Marusan Seishi made a subsidiary

2001–2026Feeling out consolidation, and shedding the skin of a corrugated-board maker

  1. 2005Katsushika and Kyoto plants renewed, at a cost of ¥6bn
  2. 2006Three-way strategic alliance with Nippon Paper and Sumitomo Corporation
  3. 2008Shin-Kyoto works launched, combining corrugated board and cartons
  4. 2009The three-way alliance is dissolved; Nihon Matai made a subsidiary
  5. 2010Fukushima Yabuki plant built, at a cost of ¥11.5bn
  6. 2011Containerboard and corrugated prices raised by 10 per cent
  7. 2012JFTC on-site inspection; Antimonopoly Act violation found
  8. 2013China business scaled back through a partial sale of the joint venture
  9. 2014Site of the old Nagoya plant sold for ¥9.6bn
  10. 2016Tri-Wall acquired; heavy packaging taken global
  11. 2017Containerboard production ends at the Yodogawa works
  12. 2019Tricor and Gutmann of Germany acquired through Tri-Wall
  13. 2024Ehime Toon plant built, at a cost of ¥14bn
  14. 2024Subsidiary RM Tohcello (アールエム東セロ) launched in functional film

Founding Story

1910–1962Corrugated board made in Japan, and a vertically integrated model completed

Rengo begins with a word. The founder gave Japan both the name and the manufacture of corrugated board, then spent the next half-century enclosing that category — merging five rivals into one company in 1920, absorbing a paper maker to secure his own containerboard, and after the war extending the chain outward to regional plants and a nationwide waste-paper collection network. By the end of the period the design had turned into revenue: sales of $9.2M (¥3bn) in the year to March 1956 had grown to $43.9M (¥16bn) by the year to March 1962, and the company stood first in the industry in integrated corrugated production.

Founding from nothing, and the birth of the word danboru

The founder, Inoue Teijiro (井上貞治郎), resolved on 12 April 1909 to set up in business on his own, and Rengo keeps that day as its founding anniversary. In August of the same year Inoue started a sole-proprietor paper-container business in Tokyo under the name Sanseisha (三成社; at the outset written 三盛舎)[1]. A 1968 survey of Japanese company histories records that, before going into business, Inoue had worked in Nakaokachimachi in Tokyo on a technique for crimping corrugations into paperboard and had developed it himself, and that the name danboru (段ボール), the Japanese word for corrugated board, was given by him[2]. The same book states that the first corrugating machine in Japan, built at that time, was donated to and is preserved at the Paper Museum in Oji[3]. By giving a name to a cushioning material for which no term had yet settled in Japan, and by establishing its manufacture himself, Inoue shaped from his own hands both the standard word and the standard product of the domestic market.

Sanseisha ran on for a little over ten years as a sole-proprietor paper-container business. Spreading a new packing material through the country while turning the business as a personal shop had to give way to a stage of gathering capital and going into volume production as a corporation, and that turning point was the establishment of Rengo Shiki in 1920. The survey records that Sanseisha subsequently received the good offices of Tokyo Electric (東京電気), consolidated other firms and became Rengo Shiki (聯合紙器, literally “allied paper containers”)[4] — conveying how the personal business begun by the man who named corrugated board drew in outside capital and reassembled itself into the vehicle for consolidating the trade. The entrance to a new industry, opened by the founder's naming, passed from Inoue's one-man shop to a corporate organisation that would go on to lead the consolidation of the industry.

A five-company merger, and the step into integrated containerboard production

In May 1920 Sanseisha, with the good offices of Tokyo Electric, consolidated five companies in all — among them Higashi Shiki Seisakusho (東紙器製作所), Eiritsusha (栄立社) and Teikoku Shiki Seizo (帝国紙器製造) — and established Rengo Shiki Co., Ltd. with capital of ¥2 million[5]. The survey dates the consolidation to 2 May 1920, and Inoue led the industry consolidation that gathered up the corrugated-board makers then proliferating. In 1923 the company absorbed a competitor, Nihon Seishi (日本製紙, headquartered in Nishiyodogawa, Osaka, and unrelated to today's Nippon Paper), acquiring the Chibune mill with it; the survey likewise states that the 1923 merger with Nihon Seishi established the basis for integrated working from papermaking through to box making[6]. In December 1930 it opened the converting plant of the Yodogawa works in Osaka, and in April 1936 added the paper mill at the same works, beginning integrated production in earnest from containerboard through to finished corrugated products[7]. In 1936 it concluded a capital tie-up with Tokyo Electric, and it expanded nationwide with the Tokyo plant in 1937[8] and the Nagoya plant in 1948. The design of holding containerboard and converting in-house became the prototype of Rengo's later competitiveness.

War damage and the loss of overseas assets left the business in a temporary void, but according to the survey the company set about rebuilding from the opening of the Nagoya sales office in 1948, adding and enlarging sales offices and plants[9]. In 1949 it listed on the first section of the Osaka Securities Exchange[10], putting in place a structure that could raise funds from the capital markets. In 1961 it built the Tonegawa paper mill[11], and from 1962 it accelerated the construction of regional plants so as to cover the whole country for waste-paper collection. A business structure that vertically integrated containerboard, corrugated products and waste-paper recovery was a design for making economies of scale tell in a commodity industry. The survey records that as of 1968 the company had grown to first place in the industry in integrated corrugated production[12] — the first-mover advantage won by naming the category at the founding was consolidated afresh through a network of plants and waste-paper collection, and the company built industry leadership during the post-war high-growth years. The idea of closing the chain in-house from containerboard through to recovery settled in as the standard form of the industry, and as consumer-goods production expanded, demand for corrugated board grew and the investment in vertical integration turned into profit.

1963–2000Modernisation after the founder's death, and expansion through the Settsu merger

The death of the founder in 1963 left the company to be run by systems rather than by one man's authority, and the decade that followed was spent replacing pre-war labour practice, the old name and ageing mills. From the 1990s the company then widened beyond corrugated board into flexible packaging and overseas ventures, and a president recruited from a trading house set it up as the mover in industry consolidation. Sales grew from $51.4M (¥19bn) in the year to March 1963 to $3.3B (¥354bn) in the year to March 2000.

Labour reform after the founder's death, and a change of name

In November 1963 the founder, Inoue Teijiro, died. The absence of a charismatic proprietor fed directly into intensifying labour disputes, and the distance between management and the shop floor widened. In 1968 President Yamano (山野) drew up a Three-Year Plan and overhauled labour practices that had survived from before the war as a system of ranks, abolishing the shokko and koin grades — the two classes of manual worker — and introducing a full monthly salary for all. In 1972 the trade name was changed from Rengo Shiki to Rengo Co., Ltd.[13], taking down the sign the company had carried since before the war. Remaking a company that had turned on the personal magnetism of its founder into one that could be turned by systems and organisation became the management task running through the ten years after Inoue's death, and it was also the precondition for moving abroad and for driving consolidation in the industry. As concentration among the leading firms advanced across the corrugated-board industry as a whole, modernising the organisation and its systems was indispensable preparation for the next generation of management.

With the oil shock of 1975 containerboard fell into oversupply, and Rengo joined a recession cartel and announced an eight-point recession programme. Even as it fell into a half-year loss the company did not halt investment, building the Shin-Kyoto plant[14], and it modernised its production sites further with the Chiba plant in 1985[15] and the Sanda plant in 1993[16]. The judgement to keep renewing capacity rather than squeeze it in a period of falling demand rested on the fact that, to maintain the vertically integrated model, ageing containerboard machinery could not be tolerated. Holding scale and equipment renewal together lifted the company's relative standing within the industry, and it fixed in the corrugated-board industry a pattern in which concentration among the leading firms advanced with every downturn.

A president from a trading house, and a full move into flexible packaging

In 1990 Rengo moved abroad in earnest by taking an equity stake in a Malaysian joint venture[17], and in the same year set up a flexible-packaging sales department, entering packaging fields outside corrugated board. In 1998 it made Howa Sangyo (朋和産業) a subsidiary and entered the flexible-packaging business in earnest[18], and in 1999 it merged with Settsu (セッツ, formerly Settsu Itagami, or Settsu Paperboard)[19]. The merger with Settsu was the occasion for deepening the relationship with Sumitomo Corporation, and in 2000 Otsubo Kiyoshi (大坪清), who came from Sumitomo Corporation, became representative director and president. Bringing in a manager from a trading house was the turning point at which a company self-contained as a corrugated-board specialist took in outside co-ordinating power and an overseas network, and the appointment also marked a shift of stance towards the role of standard-bearer for consolidation in the industry. Moves to establish overseas sites ran in parallel, keeping step with food, beverage and household-goods makers spreading their plants across Asia.

President Otsubo used Sumitomo Corporation's co-ordinating power to lay down a course of industry consolidation, and pressed on with regrouping the domestic subsidiaries: following the 1991 merger with Fukui Kagaku Kogyo (福井化学工業)[20] and the 1994 consolidation of Niigata Danboru (新潟段ボール) and Asahikawa Rengo[21], he made Marusan Seishi (丸三製紙) a subsidiary in July 2000, immediately after taking office[22]. Reassembly into integrated packaging — keeping corrugated board at the core while widening into flexible packaging — became the skeleton of the early 2000s. Out of a recognition that in commodity products one cannot win by differentiation, the company widened its business territory sideways and reorganised its capital relationships at the same time. Vertical integration of containerboard and converting, and expansion into adjacent packaging fields, became the two wheels supporting the shift from a corrugated-board specialist into an integrated packaging company. In the core corrugated business too, the consolidation of containerboard machinery and the redeployment of converting sites went on in parallel, and amid the flow of industry consolidation Rengo's advantage of scale stood out more sharply still.

Read the full history in Japanese →

Notes

  1. Rengo, securities report for the 157th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  2. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  3. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  4. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  5. Rengo, securities report for the 157th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  6. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  7. Rengo, securities report for the 157th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  8. Rengo, securities report for the 157th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  9. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  10. Rengo, securities report for the 157th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  11. Rengo, securities report for the 157th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  12. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  13. Rengo, securities report for the 157th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  14. Rengo, securities report for the 157th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  15. Rengo, securities report for the 157th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  16. Rengo, securities report for the 157th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  17. Rengo, securities report for the 157th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  18. Rengo, securities report for the 157th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  19. Rengo, securities report for the 157th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  20. Rengo, securities report for the 157th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  21. Rengo, securities report for the 157th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩
  22. Rengo, securities report for the 157th term (FYE March 2025), corporate history section↩

References & sources

  1. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha (1968), the Rengo Shiki entry.

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